Here's a roundup of stories about women in fandom that might be of interest to fans:

• An urgent call is going out to any female fan artists in the New York City area! The PBS program Off Book did a piece on fan artists on May 2. "The fan art community is one of the most creative and active online. Taking pop culture stories and icons as its starting point, the fan community extends those characters into new adventures, unexpected relationships, bizarre remixes, and even as the source material for beautiful art. Limited only by the imagination of the artist, the fan art world is full of surprises and brilliance." Apparently it is also "limited only" by the gender of the fan artist in the show's eyes, as not a single woman appeared to speak despite some of their fan art being shown. Super-wiki owner missyjack protested the exclusion of female artists on the YouTube post, and received a request from a show representative to gather the names of fans willing to be interviewed. If you're a female fan artist in NYC who would be willing to take part and broaden this representation of fan artists, comment at her blog.
• Also infuriating to many female fans was the representation of female audience members by MovieFone with regards to the new Marvel movie release, The Avengers. More than one female fan protested the representation of women as passive audience members dragged to the film simply to please boyfriends. The Discriminating Fangirl wrote "Instead of writing an intelligent guide to the movies for people who aren’t already fans" the article included "idiotic, sexist stereotypes." She summed up the problem with "Yes, because every girl going to see The Avengers is a giggling twit who’s obsessed with being pretty, watching inane rom coms, and who never got over high school. That’s insulting both to fangirls AND to girls who dig rom coms, because it...downplays womens’ intelligence and their taste in films. If girls like it, it must be fluff." She added that "superhero genre stuff AND romance genre stuff...[are] two interests [that] are not mutually exclusive."
• By comparison the just-completed ROFLcon III, a "State of the Web Union" conference held in Cambridge, Massachussetts, had a panel on Fangirl Culture alongside other panels on internet memes and supercuts ("those densely packed, tightly edited video compilations that usually hone in on an idiosyncratic film or television trope"). The Fangirl panel "brought together several fanfic creators-slash-experts, who discussed the increasingly mainstream visibility of fanfic, as well as the bad rap it sometimes gets — despite the fact that most of us grew up daydreaming ourselves into the lives of our favorite characters." It also spawned a related online article about the origins of vidding.

If you are a female creator of fanworks, you can help correct the media assumption that there are only one or two of you out here. Why not contribute to Fanlore? Additions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup — on transformativeworks.org, LJ, or DW — or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. Links are welcome in all languages!

Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

Here's a roundup of fan focus stories that might be of interest to fans:

• The Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati, Ohio is hosting Spectacle: The Music Video. "This is the first time a contemporary art museum has examined the music video format through a diverse exhibition—employing immersive environments, photography, video screenings, objects and interactive installations." The exhibit will include the contribution of fan vidders Luminosity, Killa, and T. Jonesy.
• The MLB Network is launching MLB Fan Cave in which contestants will "spend most or all of the 2012 baseball season in a 15,000-square-foot loft in the heart of Greenwich Village." The fans chosen will "watch every MLB game, chronicle their experience via social media and conduct video interviews with players and celebrities that will be broadcast online." Contestants were chosen from an online vote of their application videos, and then narrowed down at spring training in Arizona where they "were chosen based on the number of votes their videos received as well as how much social media buzz they were able to generate."
• More than one college newspaper focused on sightings of Sherlock related fan graffiti. San Francisco State University's Golden Gate Express reported that "Along with the fliers, fans have been doodling their messages on the blackboards in the campus bathrooms and on hallway walls." As photos of the content moved online it allowed fans to gather together while leaving the clueless in the dark. "'I had no idea what it was,' said SF State sociology major Mandy Kerr, who recalled spotting 'Believe in Sherlock' signs in the Creative Arts building. 'I pictured a little old man with a cane. Is that what he looks like?'" UC Berkeley's student-run newspaper, The Daily Californian, took note of this divide and suggested "Where the fans have won, I feel the casual TV viewer may have been lost. Fan fiction is now mainstream, fan art is now cultivated and an immediate intimacy has been forged between fan and show by social media forums like Twitter and YouTube. The world of fandom has intensified with participants being more active and the television industry being more receptive than ever. I’m afraid the passive fans of the world are being gradually phased out."
• Perhaps inspired by news stories about plans for a fan-centered brothel in Nevada there have been several porn-related scams targeting Doctor Who fans. One used a Twitter account to start posting photos taken from escort sites claiming they were Doctor Who fangirls and sending those who clicked to a porn site. A second hoax offered sex tapes by Doctor Who actresses. "Instead of getting to see what they wanted, the links instead took them to hardcore Asian porn sites."

If you are a Doctor Who, Sherlock or baseball fan, write fan fiction or make vids, why not contribute to Fanlore? Additions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup — on transformativeworks.org, LJ, or DW — or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. Links are welcome in all languages!

Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

Here's a roundup of stories on Hunger Games fandom that might be of interest to fans:

• The launch of the Hunger Games film has prompted fan activity to hit the news. A piece in The New York Times focused on the fandom's partnership with Oxfam to fight hunger and suggested that fandom can be a pathway for social activism, mentioning the upcoming issue of Transformative Works and Cultures that explores fan activities on this front. However, while it mentions the need for outside organizations to work with fan-originated groups, the article fails to discuss the fact that fan efforts are supported only if they go through official channels to do so. The Hollywood Reporter posted about the film's distributor, Lionsgate, sending a cease and desist letter to the Harry Potter Alliance's Imagine Better Project--the group featured in the Times' article. Lionsgate cites the Project's website and marketing as "causing damage" to its own efforts, and because Lionsgate had already paired with the United Nations' World Food Programme and Feeding America to pursue similar goals, the company wants fans to work through those two organizations. Though a source close to the studio said that Lionsgate would not pursue legal action, they did threaten a take-down of the fan site. Twilight fans can probably sympathize, as the films' distributor, Summit Entertainment, has been so aggressive in searching out related merchandise that it attempted to remove an artist's work for using the film's release date in her otherwise completely unrelated work.
• Unfortunately, some fans have been effective in squashing the squee of other parts of the Hunger Games fandom, as a post in The Guardian made clear. Says the article's author, "I am a woman of colour with a deep--almost unhealthy--love of popular culture. It is a love that is sorely tested in the face of such prejudice when I am told, loudly and with few qualms, that the stories of people who look like me just aren't viable in a specific universe. It is often explicitly stated by my co-fans that I am not–-ever-–what they picture when they read these books or hear about these movies. The language may be coded: 'She's not how I imagined' or, in the case of interracial couple Sam and Mercedes on TV's Glee, slightly more explicit: 'They don't look right together, like, they don't . . . fit.' But the message is clear. We get to be supporting characters-–the redshirts--or the villains. But heroes? Um, no. That would make things too . . . ethnic."
• A Connecticut high school produced its own version the story: "Teacher Janet Kenny dressed up as Effie Trinket to conduct the reaping and selected the names of one boy and one girl tribute from 'districts'--grades nine through 12. The students, or 'tributes,' then scrambled to collect items from the 'cornucopia' in the middle of the gym. Two months into the games, the tributes competed in games related trivia, fashion, cake decorating, and archery. The lucky winner [received] a pair of tickets to see the film opening weekend."
• A piece in Salon suggests that recent film successes have demonstrated "the awesome cultural power of young readers, especially young girls." Arguing that the film's marketing team can't take credit for fan enthusiasm, writer Laura Miller states "[A] good movie and a canny promotional campaign aren’t enough to make hundreds of people camp out in a tent city to await a movie’s premiere. That kind of enthusiasm only comes from a fandom, an organized, well-networked, convivial mass of people who really, really love something and want to talk about it—a lot." While prior to the film's opening, some coverage suggested that fanboys rather than families would be the core of the film's success, Miller counters this. Referring to a New York Times article that attributed Hunger Games' box office defeat of Breaking Dawn: Part 1 to its larger percentage of male viewers, she writes, "Like the Times, you could look at these figures as an indication of how much better a movie franchise can do when it appeals to young men as well as young women — or you could just acknowledge the fact that a movie can now be a big hit without appealing to young men at all."

If you are a Hunger Games fan why not write about it in Fanlore? Additions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup — on transformativeworks.org, LJ, or DW — or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. Links are welcome in all languages!

Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

Here's a roundup of legal issues stories that might be of interest to fans:

• Creators and copyright holders have various different types of engagement with fans, and these sometime end in conflict. A remix of Samuel Jackson's reading of "Go the Fuck to Sleep" posted on YouTube was taken down although the remixer "maintained that his creative works don’t violate copyright, thanks to exemptions in copyright law that allow for “transformative” uses of copyrighted material." And the basketball team the L.A. Clippers recently asked that their most recognizable fan stop using the name Clipper Darrell, which outraged many fans who noticed the team was perfectly happy to allow him the title when the team was doing poorly.
• An actor who briefly appeared in the U.S. show Community's Dr. Who spoof Inspector Spacetime sought fan funding for a six episode web-series based on the character/show premise. "Inspector Spacetime, has developed such a devoted internet following since it first showed up at the beginning of the fall season. So much so that it has its own Tumblr and history, which is as extensive as the show it’s spoofing." However, he recently explained that "Lawyers from Sony and NBC have contacted me demanding that I cease production" but asked that contributions continue. "Richey is now calling the project “Untitled Webseries About a Space Traveler Who Can Also Travel Through Time” but [is] otherwise going ahead as planned."
• The results of copyright struggles remain in debate, with some arguing that piracy is the natural result of producers' actions. Citing a recent study on the effect of the lag in movie release times worldwide and how it had a noticeable effect on the decrease of movie downloading, one blogger asks "If you’re in the U.S., is piracy less of an issue than it used to be depending on the particular media and market? If you’re overseas, do you find that it’s easier to get pirated copies online of things that take months, if ever, to come out where you are?"
• A blogger who posted Fan Fiction: Moral Rights v. Transformative Use cited the OTW's argument that fan fiction is "an act of transformative creation constituting fair use under 17 USC § 107" while examining the case of Diana Gabaldon and George R. R. Martin. He suggests Gabaldon "is trying to build a case...for an author’s moral rights." While the aspect of noncommerciality as a fair use factor is not mentioned, he argues that "much fan fiction originates from a more participatory impulse. Gabaldon and Martin ask why fanfic writers don’t just develop their own characters, or at least appropriate old characters in the public domain (Jane Eyre, for instance), but I think they’re not accounting for this impulse, a desire to participate actively in the culture."
• Copyright holders themselves may have trouble participating in the culture depending on what their work focuses on. PayPal has issued directives to online ebook retailers that is erasing particular forms of erotic content from the marketplace. "Smashwords founder Coker said that the rise of e-books has shifted more power in the book world to payment processors and banks. In the past, readers walked into a physical bookstore and could purchase a book with cash, leaving such companies out of the equation. "Electronic payments have become the oxygen of e-commerce and e-books, so PayPal, banks and credit card companies have enormous power," Coker said. "What right does a financial institution have to censor legal content? Authors are being caught in the middle.""

If you write fan fiction, are a Community, or Inspector Spacetime fan, or you remix content, why not write about it in Fanlore? Additions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup — on transformativeworks.org, LJ, or DW — or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. Links are welcome in all languages!

Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.